Memeorandum

September 30, 2018

Sunday Morning

This NY Times article on scientific misconduct contains a passage inadvertently explaining conservative distrust of the liberal academic establishment:

...All of [the issues in gathering and interpreting data] makes the most popular food and health studies problematic and frequently contradictory.

In one recent example, an observational study of thousands of people published in The Lancet last year made headlines with its findings that high-carb diets were linked to increased mortality rates and that eating saturated fat and meat was protective. Then in August, a separate team of researchers published an observational study of thousands of people in a related journal, The Lancet Public Health, with contrasting findings: Low-carb diets that were high in meat increased mortality rates.

“You can analyze observational studies in very different ways and, depending on what your belief is — and there are very strong nutrition beliefs out there — you can get some very dramatic patterns,” Dr. Ioannidis said.

No doubt. And the idea of "motivated research" - that data has not been collected and analyzed correctly until it confirms the researchers world-view - surely does not exist only in the field of nutrition science.

Comments

DOBBS: Tucker, I truly believe what is going on here, what we are witnessing, is not only the corrosive political corruption of the left and these radical DIMMs who sit on particularly the Judiciary Committee but we’re watching a tenet of what has become the Democratic Party’s most important manifesto – and that is to deny American exceptionalism and [Kavanaugh] is extraordinarily exceptional. …This man stands for all that is good and great about this country: his commitment to his studies, to improving himself, his service to the community. My God, how could you ask for anyone better to sit on the Supreme Court?

Unemployment near a 20-year low screams at the U.S. Federal Reserve to raise interest rates or risk a too-hot economy. The bond market, not far from a state that typically precedes a recession, says not so fast.

The decision of which to heed looms large when the Fed’s interest-rate setters meet next week. Which path they follow will begin to define whether Chairman Jerome Powell engineers a sustained, recession-free era of full employment, or spoils the party with interest rate increases that prove too much for the economy to swallow.

New Fed staff research and Powell’s own remarks seem to put more weight on the risks of super-tight labor markets, which could mean a shift up in the Fed’s rate outlook and a tougher tone in its rhetoric.

Goldman Sachs economists, for instance, contend the Fed’s “optimal” rate path is “well above market pricing under a broad range of assumptions.” They see four increases likely next year, while investors expect only one or two, a significant gap.

Sounds like the Fed is choosing door number one, focusing on inflation and tightening policy to counter it. That’s what it has typically done since the 1970s.

But this time, as I said, the risks are a lot higher.

First, higher interest rates will, other things being equal, make the dollar stronger. This is a very big deal for the emerging market countries that have borrowed trillions of US dollars and will now have to pay off those loans in ever-more-expensive currency. Since they’ve borrowed most of these dollars from developed-world banks, that means trillions of dollars of potentially non-performing loans, leading to yet another massive bailout of European and American banks and the financial instability that that implies.

Second — and far more systemically dangerous — corporate, government and consumer debt (especially student debt) are all at record levels. Send the economy back into recession with higher interest rates, and government tax revenues, corporate sales and profits, and personal incomes all fall at the same time interest costs are soaring because of those higher rates.

So from emerging markets to US corporations to Washington’s budget to consumers’ balance sheets, the next recession might be death spirals all the way down. Which means rising interest rates will beget much, much lower rates before too long..

Pergram
Graham on Fox on Kavanaugh: The FBI background supplemental investigation should be done early part of this week, Monday or Tuesday. Then we'll have a final passage vote later in the week. I'm highly confident he will be confirmed.

If Ford was serious about her attempted rape and
fear for her life allegation she’d press charges against
Kavanaugh in Maryland. His name would be withdrawn
because he’s under criminal investigation. What’s she
waiting for?

Do the Ford shysters have "a right" to know the names of people the FBI wants to interview about their useful idiot client?
...and, yes, I can easily believe Ford has been in on it from the beginning but doesn't know how disposable she is.

Wow! Just starting to hear the Democrats, who are only thinking Obstruct and Delay, are starting to put out the word that the “time” and “scope” of FBI looking into Judge Kavanaugh and witnesses is not enough. Hello! For them, it will never be enough - stay tuned and watch!

In some synagogues, Ecclesiastes was recited yesterday.Chapter 7 verse 26, Koheles (Solomon laments the possibility of being ensnared by an evil woman. The Talmud in Berachot Page 8a https://www.halakhah.com/berakoth/berakoth_8.html
in the fourth paragraph of the link discusses the distinction that Solomon makes in finding the good wife in Proverbs Chapter 18 verse 22. The Talmud makes the distinction in the finding or discovery somewhat like the song looking for Love in all the wrong places.

So what type of findings or discovery will the FBI make in analyzing Ms. Ford? In context , Yiddish has an expression that you got a Metzia which is derived in the discussion of Moza/Moze which is a bargain which sometimes means you got more than you bargained for. Also would like SBW to give distinction between evil and wicked.

TM started the conversation in this thread about scientific misconduct. Pop was a rocket scientist who was very well respected. We used to discuss this issue 40 years ago.

The first big problem he saw was that almost all of the scientists engaged in the ecological/environmental sector were not real scientists. He also knew Carl Sagan and while he liked him thought he was a con man.

One of the absolutes of research in science and engineering is reproducibility. How many cases have we seen over the past 20 years of irreproducible results? many. We can't even agree on the food pyramid, much less climate change. Is fat good? Is it bad? Flip a coin.

Yesterday I was trying to get away from the 24/7 Kulturkampf and tuned in the BBC only to hear some dimwit saying that Mann's fraud didn't really matter. Something along the lines that global climate has actually dropped 0.7degrees C over some period of time. But oh no, that only proves Mann correct.

In science today there is a distinct climate of Lysenkoism. The experiments are devised to confirm the theory rather than to see where it goes, which is the real point of experimentation. The data can be falsified and twisted just like Churchill's dictum on statistics.

This trend has spread from anthropology to the other social sciences and now into engineering and pure science. Damn you, Margaret Mead!

Buckeye, the courts would be fine. RBG declares all men guilty (as a group), seizes their assets, and bans them from speaking for eternity. Just one court, about 5 minutes elapsed time. No grinding halt.

When I was in college I took a semester of environmental geology. It was the late 70's and we had had some remarkably cold winters.ALL of the material I read was about how we were in danger of a new Ice Age.

After I worked for a couple of years and then married and had my daughter (who needed some surgeries ) I was out of the professioal loop for quite a while.

Imagine my confusion when taking the kids to the pool and the gal next to me on the pool lounges started talking about global warming. She had watched some special on PBS and was repeating it to me. Coincidentally, it was a very hot summer. This conversation was where I heard the now-disproved story of the sheep in South America going blind from cosmic radiation.

People accept global warming on faith, since most people have rudimentary educations in science. It is infuriating.

I am waiting to see if the solar minimum brings us a very cold winter. I look forward to the "experts" explaining that.

Buckeye, the courts would be fine. RBG declares all men guilty (as a group), seizes their assets, and bans them from speaking for eternity. Just one court, about 5 minutes elapsed time. No grinding halt.

You're probably right Henry. Good thing she's on her last legs, so to speak.

No. On the same four corners, across the Falls Road, is a Giant. In the same area as the Potomac Deli where my daughter worked as a waitress wihen in High School. I need to ask her about all of this. She may know some of the kids since she is younger than them but close enough to their ages. Plus she had boyfriends from GP.

The ancient Mesopotamians took false charges very seriously. This is from the very beginning of the Code of Hammurabi:

1. If any one ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but he can not prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death.

2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.

570. Anybody who knows evidence must testify in court (Leviticus 5:1)
571. Carefully interrogate the witness (Deuteronomy 13:14)
572. A witness must not serve as a judge in capital crimes (Deuteronomy 19:17)
573. Not to accept testimony from a lone witness (Deuteronomy 19:15)
574. Transgressors must not testify (Exodus 23:1)
575. Relatives of the litigants must not testify (Deuteronomy 24:16)
576. Not to testify falsely (Exodus 20:16)
577. Punish the false witnesses as they tried to punish the defendant (Deuteronomy 19:19)

And the look & design of Alpha in general holds up pretty well, especially considering the budget they must have had. They’re running it on weekends on the Comet channel, and I am enjoying it, cheesy as the acting and the stories are.

Yes they were solid on the design, the commercials have a scene with a very hippy looking Christopher lee, I remember I had the transport back then, just the notion that the moon could fly out of the solar system.

Daughter doesn't know the cast of characters, but is working on the remodel of his potenial office at SCOTUS. She is an restoration artist and does faux painting on the floors. PIcked out his (hopefully, his) flooring and will do all the faux painting on them. Currently doing the SCOTUS conference room. Just finished dining room at German Embassy.

That is the SCOTUS conference room she is working on. She also did Scalia's office for Gorsuch. A mess. He threw his cigarettes on the floor. LOL.

I posted that excerpt from the Code of Hamurabi because someone mentioned it on Twitter, so I went to look it up.

You are quite right the prohibition on bearing false witness is one of the Ten Commandments. I was just struck by how it was more prevalent than I thought. (Quite a deterioration into accepting Taqiyah as a legitimate practice under Islam. )

narciso, seems when China went with Social Credit Scores, the EU got jealous and did a "hold my beer." All the big social tech code from both appears to run under the covers here. Globalism, what can't it oppress?

At least she gets paid (big bucks). She picked out the flooriing but the guys who lay it are all volunteers from around the country. She is also doing the Decatur House, which is a big deal for her, since it is The White House Historical Association.

She says it is laborius but fun and keeps her mind focused. Like Gabriel Allon on restoriing old masters, but she's not a Mossad trained killer:)

She probably served me many times Jack! I do miss that place. Took the team there after many a swim meet.

I LOVE seeing artists use their talents and make real money.

I had some columns in my house and my BIL was dating a struggling artist. I handed her a piece of green marble and told her if she could make those columns look like that marble, I would pay her an hourly rate a number of times higher than she had ever earned doing anything. She did and I did, and she never looked back. Twenty five years later, every time I buy one of her paintings we laugh about my columns which still fool the eyes of most observers.

Funny thing is that anybody who knows art history knows how often the great masters had to "paint bathrooms" between great commissions.